


Dashed on a Lightless Shore

by Silnorne



Series: Flights of the Cicada [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Drow, Elves, F/F, High Fantasy, M/M, Pirates, Sky Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29073666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silnorne/pseuds/Silnorne
Summary: Graven placed his faith in an exiled prince with nothing but tales of an age long lost. For better or worse, the Cicada pays the price.
Series: Flights of the Cicada [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2119011
Kudos: 1





	Dashed on a Lightless Shore

**Author's Note:**

> Set a few years after Keeping The Code.

It’d been a good idea until the fucking _dragons_ showed up.

Even with the exceptional dark vision of his drow heritage, Graven can still barely see through the chaos. But he can hear them; shrieking, biting and clawing at the hulls of his fleet. The Cicada speeding along with gashes raked into both sides, billowing thick black smoke into the narrow tunnels. He’s been shouting orders but he’s no longer sure anyone can hear him, each jet of acid flying from the creatures’ mouths scorches a bit more of the hull – or an unlucky crewman. The stink of necrotising flesh makes his gut churn.

He knows they’ve already lost at least one ship, falling away from the pack into the black haze behind them, tens of souls dragged down with it. He hopes Tristam is right about all this; about the corruption, about the old gods, about saving their world. If he isn’t…

“Captain!” Avelyn’s voice rises sharply above the cacophony. “To starboard!” Graven turns in time to see the glint of a bulbous yellow eye - only that glimpse enough warning to hurl himself out of the way of the descending talons. A deep trench rakes into the deck where he once stood and pelts him with splinters, the creature rearing back with a hiss when he lashes out with his sword and strikes flesh between hard scales. The dragon pulls away from the hull, gaping jaws splitting wide to launch another volley of acid. Before it can burn the Cicada again Tristam’s drake slams heavily into its side, all thick armoured hide and powerful teeth crushing the thinner dragon scales around the beast’s neck. The two behemoths vanish into the darkness, but there are too many for the drake to fend off alone. Graven scrambles to his feet just as a second dragon closes in, snapping with thin razor teeth at the mast, for now just out of reach.

The thundering blasts of the Cicada’s broadside cannons sound even louder echoing in the caverns, temporarily making his ears ring. Four of the shots strike true but the dragon is only knocked briefly off-course. A short distance behind them the Heartseeker lights up with a rainbow flare of spells flung from its deck into the dragon’s flank. The beast turns and snaps, colliding with a long stalactite just large enough to stun it on impact. He can barely see anything anymore through the smoke, but he can still hear the fury in its roar fading out behind them. They need space, somewhere the cannons don’t risk blowing them out of the sky along with the dragons. Under his feet the deck vibrates with the familiar grinding of an overstressed drift engine; they won’t be able to stay in the air much longer.

It’ll be worth it, he tells himself. As long as Tristam takes back his city and the rest of the plan succeeds, this will be worth it.

By Loughra, he hopes it’s worth it.

Ahead the tunnels widen into a vast cave, clusters of glowing orange fungus reflected in deep pools of black water. Tristam’s drake bursts through the smog into the clearing, followed by three shrieking dragons. Graven looks behind him to where the fleet is clearing the smoke as well, still spitting jets of flame and lightning at their attackers, the deafening barrages of cannon shots never ceasing. Only three aside from the Cicada. Graven feels a pit open in his stomach – another lost somewhere, hopefully only diverted rather than struck down. This can’t continue.

As he thinks this, the Cicada lists violently to port. He’s almost thrown off his feet, but momentum instead sends him colliding with the railing. He can hear Harlow swearing, but there’s something else. Something underneath them, getting louder by the second, almost like-

“ _Clear the bow!_ ” He shouts, and the time he takes to warn his crew uses what precious few seconds he has to move himself aside. An enormous black-scaled head erupts from the planks beneath him as a pain he has never experienced in his life explodes in his side. He drops his sword, but doesn’t hear it hit the deck, shaking hands closing around a thick, smooth tooth puncturing through the flesh under his ribs. The dragon shoves forward, trying to close the rest of its jaw around him, and for a second he sees stars. His back crushes against the railing, the tooth spearing in deeper, all his vision narrowed down to the slitted yellow eye in front of him, sound faded out to the blood pulsing in his ears.

His hands scrabble around him, trying to find _anything_ to fight back with. The Cicada lists again and this time the motion forces a scream of pain out of him, but his hand closes around a long shard of splintered wood sliding across the deck, and with as much strength as he can he lurches forward and stabs it into the dragon’s eye. The noise it makes is the stuff of nightmares, thick yellow fluid spraying from its socket, but its tooth stays lodged in Graven’s torso when it tries to pull away. He grits his teeth, taking the tooth in both hands and wrenching with every bit of strength his goblin heritage has given him. He thinks he’ll end up dragged off the ship, snapped up and devoured, but just as his feet begin slipping forward a wet, sucking crack heralds the tooth coming free of the dragon’s jaw.

Graven falls back heavily against the railing, still clutching the tooth in his side. He doesn’t dare pull it out, the blood loss would surely kill him in minutes, but he can feel the unclean burning of the acid starting to cycle through his system.

Someone takes him by the shoulders when his knees buckle under him, but he’s much too far gone to recognise who it is, vision narrowing further and further until at last all goes dark.

* * *

The door of The Inn is slammed open so hard it almost come off its hinges. The group sitting at the nearest table flinches away from where it hits the wall and bounces off again, but all other eyes are on the pirate dragging herself over to the bar. A trail of blood spots marks her passage over the floorboards, dripping from more than one deep tear across her arms and torso, matted in long braided hair. Copper and ash taint the smell of ale and old wood.

Owain watches Avelyn approach with a strange foreboding chill. At one of the tables Elise looks up from setting the customers’ drinks down, not fast enough mastering her emotions to hide the faint gasp or the downward twitch of her ears. A hundred questions race through his mind, each one clamouring for priority over the rest. He doesn’t ask any of them. Instead, he fills a tankard with one of their stronger stock and sets it down in front of Avelyn as she slides gingerly onto the stool across the counter. It’s gone in one long, desperate chug. He replaces it with another, and this time Avelyn only nurses it.

“Medic,” she manages hoarsely. He’s not sure if it’s from drowning herself in the alcohol or because she’s barely conscious. From one of the closer tables a middle-aged human gets up and begins making his way over to her, adjusting the small pair of glasses perched on his nose.

“I’m a doctor,” he says hastily, holding up his hands when Avelyn’s one working green eye fixes on him. Owain doesn’t recognise the man beyond a passing familiarity, but he doesn’t remember him being trouble either. The doctor reaches out slowly, but Avelyn slaps his hand away.

“Dock,” she says in a strained whisper.

“Yes, that’s right,” the doctor replies soothingly. “If you’ll allow me to look at your injuries, I can-“

“ _Docks!_ ” Avelyn snarls, hand striking out to grab the doctor’s jacket. Several others from the same table tense up – probably the doctor’s friends – but Avelyn just sends him stumbling towards the door. She wobbles precariously on her seat, but makes no effort to correct herself. “Help them.”

Realisation dawns on the doctor’s face, and he ducks back inside the inn to hurriedly pick up a large leather bag before rushing out again with his friends in tow. Owain is watching them leave, a sickening twist beginning to tighten in his stomach, when the thump draws his eyes back to the empty seat and a few concerned noises from the patrons. The cry of distress in Elise’s voice freezes something in his chest. Startled, he looks over the bar at Avelyn’s unconscious form and the steadily growing pool of blood beneath her. His daughter’s hands and dress – one of her favourites, he recalls for one absurd moment - already soaked in red where she’s trying to locate and stop the bleeding. She’s not used to scenes like this, hands fluttering uncertainly over the pirate’s body, and Avelyn… Avelyn remains motionless.

 _Fuck_.

* * *

For Graven, waking is like seeing the world through a layer of tar and hearing through cotton wool, and all lit ablaze around him. His vision is so badly blurred he can barely make out shapes, sounds distant and alien, but it’s the _pain_ that almost undoes him. He can’t remember how or where it started, only that it feels like it’s in every vein. Even _thinking_ seems to bring fire scorching through him. In the darkness before his eyes hazy shapes ghost back and forth. He can’t tell where he is, there’s nothing to feel but the burning, that noise must be him screaming. Panic starts to roil inside him, closing up his throat. His body can’t deal with the onslaught, and it only takes either seconds or days for him to slip back under into unconsciousness again.

The next time he wakes the pain has dulled to only agony. He does not scream, but he does cry out despite himself when attempting to move feels like his side is splitting open. Without thinking his hands scrabble at his stomach, convinced any wound that feels so deep must surely mean his insides are spilling free. His nails catch something that isn’t skin and under the burning there is a stab of something sharper and cleaner. Warmth spreads across his fingers, and from somewhere above him there is a muffled voice tinged with something that might sound like concern before he suddenly can’t move his arms anymore. He tries to call out, to be let go, that he needs to keep the wound sealed or else he will surely die, but all that comes out is a distressed groan before the darkness takes him once more.

The third time he wakes he no longer feels as though he’s moments from death – on its street perhaps, but not quite on its doorstep. The pain has subsided enough he can finally look at his surroundings, but the simply domestic interior doesn’t help him work out where he is. It’s dark, only the soft glow of a few lamps letting him see anything at all. There’s a soft bed under him and thick blankets over him, but somehow, they don’t seem to do much to stop the chills. That disturbs him more than the blunt throbbing pain now. Drow barely ever feel cold; he can’t remember the last time he felt the cold enough to register it. Now his entire body shudders with it. Bits and pieces of his memory slowly begin to return – the dragons, the losses of his fleet, the feeling of the tooth puncturing his side. Graven shivers again, not from the cold, and almost flinches when a hand settles on his forehead.

“Easy,” someone says – a deep voice he feels he must know from the way it pulls at something in his chest. The hand’s owner comes into view a moment later, and suddenly things make a lot more sense in Graven’s mind.

“Owain,” he breathes with no small amount of effort, the thin rasp of his voice one he barely recognises. Wolfwater’s pirate-captain-turned-innkeeper settles into the chair Graven failed to notice beside the bed, a small earthen mug in his other hand.

“Aye,” Owain replies, sounding distracted. “Try not to talk too much. You’ve not passed the danger yet.” The hand on Graven’s forehead pulls back, only enough to slip under the back of his neck as Owain lifts the mug. “You’ll want to be drinking this.”

“What is it?”

“Stronger than what you had before.”

Not exactly an answer. But then, Graven is beginning to suspect the reason his pain is in any way tolerable right now may have something to do with the contents of that mug. He tries to raise a hand to take it, and immediately realises what a stupid idea it was when a fresh shooting pain gores into his side. Instead, when his body is finished spasming in retaliation, he finds the cool rim of the mug poised patiently at his lips. He wants to snort at the absurdity of being fed like a child; he can’t. He can only gratefully accept and resist the urge to feel revulsion at his own weakness. Surviving a dragon attack has to mitigate _some_ of this.

It tastes awful, as all medicines worth taking do, with seemingly as much of an aversion to him as he has to it. Turning aside as a precaution against vomiting it straight back up is just as bad an idea as the first time he tried to move on his own. Owain holds him steady while he struggles through the dreadful loop of coughing and retching, until at last he collapses back to the bed with a fresh sheen of sweat beading his brow.

“Wasn’t sure you could’ve taken it worse than the first time,” Owain says dryly. Graven feels his expression twist into what he hopes is disgust, a uniquely foul aftertaste making itself comfortable on his tongue.

“Helps to have no idea what’s happening,” he mutters back, closing his aching eyes. “How long was I out?” Anything longer than a week and he’ll have to make it up to Ave-

“Twenty-three days,” Owain tells him softly. Graven’s eyes snap back open, darting to Owain’s face on the unlikely chance he’s joking, but he isn’t. Rather than cold, now he feels numb. Twenty-three _days_? He wants to reject it. Instead, he stares hard at the sombre expression on Owain’s face.

“And how long have you been treating me?” Owain returns his stare with steady and piercing blue eyes, but the crease between his eyebrows deepens almost imperceptibly. Graven looks him over; takes in the slightly ruffled hair, the slouch in posture. “The _whole_ time?”

“No more room at The Inn,” Owain replies evenly, a grim smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.

“Why me?” Graven presses on, ignoring the cautionary tightening of his chest that tells him he’s pushing himself too much. Owain frowns, opens his mouth, then seems to think better of it.

“You were the only one-” he begins again. “Those who could still be helped didn’t require as much attention.” The phrasing doesn’t pass him by, even with his mind as fuzzy as it is.

“How many..?” He half-whispers. Owain shakes his head.

“I don’t know the specifics.”

“Then give me estimates.”

Owain shakes his head again. “Before you worry about them, worry about recovering.” The ‘ _you’re lucky to be alive_ ’ remains unsaid but implied. Graven closes his eyes again, sighing deeply – but carefully. He doesn’t want to rest. He wants to know what happened to his crew. If only he could _move,_ he would be out of this bed already. He would go and find Avelyn. He’d-…

He doesn’t realise he’s biting his lip hard enough to bleed until Owain grips his shoulder, just tightly enough to pull him back out of his head. He can see understanding in the human’s face, and has to laugh – or try to. Of course Owain understands, the infamous captain of the Lotus, it would be foolish to think he’d never lost men and women during his time at sea. Wisdom is often hard-won with experience…

Graven inclines his head in wordless apology, all his remaining energy seeming to vanish with that simple motion. To think he can’t even muster the energy to lie in bed doing nothing. His eyelids feel heavy, the familiar darkness creeping in at the edges.

Before sleep claims him entirely, the last thing he feels is the warm pressure of a hand closing over his own.

* * *

“Will he be okay?”

Avelyn looks down at the elf girl in her lap, eyebrows raised in question. She’d been lost in myriad thoughts, piecing together how they could bring their ruined ship and crew back together. Elise lies back against her chest, peering up at her with big, worried blue eyes. “Captain Ford,” Elise clarifies. “He’ll survive, right?” Avelyn exhales heavily and rests her chin on top of Elise’s head.

“He took a rough hit,” she says slowly. She can still vividly see the moment Graven passed out aboard the ruined Cicada in the middle of the battle. The tooth the length of her arm punched through his side. “If we’d made it here any later…” She doesn’t want to think about that. The Cicada without its captain would be a very different beast, and while they would survive and move on as they must, she’s not sure they would ever really recover. Small-time raids, drifting aimlessly in search of what scraps of plunder they could find. No, without Graven - without his mind and his heart and the relentless _need_ for adventure - they would become not even a footnote in history. Alive, but not living.

“Ave?” She blinks, lost again while Elise squeezes her hand and tries to bring her back. Avelyn shakes herself and winds her arms tighter around Elise.

“He’ll be alright,” she murmurs into the soft blonde curls, enjoying the warmth against her battered body. She remembers frightened blue eyes and tentative hands – part of her feels guilty for scaring the girl, but when the Cicada had limped into port, she had been the only one capable of going to get help. Now though, she remembers how Elise had been shaking when she’d finally come to consciousness. She remembers the worry lines on that pretty face and the low tilt of long ears.

Elise turns around in Avelyn’s lap, giving her a searching look.

“What about you?” She asks, holding Avelyn’s face so gently she can barely feel it. Avelyn settles her hands on Elise’s waist and rests their foreheads together, stroking her thumbs in soothing circles.

“Oh, you know me, Princess.” Avelyn grins, pushing past the unease in her gut. “I get back up fast.” Pulling them flush against each other draws a giggle out of Elise, but it doesn’t quite break the tension everyone can feel. There’s the sense of a storm in the air, of something waiting to break. She wants to stay here, wrapped up in Elise and waiting for the world to right itself again, but as tightly as they cling to each other Avelyn knows she has a duty. As much as running from it and allowing herself to be selfish would be welcome, she can’t do that.

But another hour can’t hurt. She gathers Elise up against her and tips them sideways onto the bed, ignoring the way it jars her injuries in favour of the softness of the pillows. Elise doesn’t need to be told what she’s feeling – she’s already ducking her head down to fit against Avelyn’s collar, arms winding carefully around and clenching in the loose white shirt. One slim leg hitches over Avelyn’s hip in an effort to be as close as possible. The aches dull a little like this. Avelyn closes her eyes, choosing not to think about what comes next, and falls asleep to the soft rhythm of Elise’s breathing.

* * *

The journey from Elise’s room at The Inn to Owain’s house is a heavy one. Avelyn hasn’t seen Graven since he was taken away for treatment, drawn away to oversee the repair work on the Cicada and take what rest she could between. She doesn’t know what she’ll find.

The house is a comfortable little place, a reasonably sized building of two floors with a well-maintained garden and homey fence bordering it. The front door is closed but not locked, pushed open with a faint squeak of old hinges. From there the picture of a quiet civilian life is harshly dispelled. The place has a sickly tinge to the air, carrying the stench of infection and something strongly medicinal. The curtains are closed, leaving only the faint light of the lamps.

A makeshift bed has been set up in the living room, piled with blankets thrown together quickly but with some care. Graven rests under them. Avelyn doesn’t think she’s ever seen him look so ill – his skin looks washed out, braids limp with sweat and the remains of blood not rinsed away when they hastily washed him down. He’d been adamant about not allowing his braids to be undone – after all, they were a part of his culture, and each of the six represented the vessels carrying the men and women who’d pledged to follow him. To let himself be seen without them was considered an insult, and Graven never did take insults to his crew well.

Part of her is glad she can’t see the wound. She’d seen enough when it was inflicted. Instead, she leans on the wooden doorframe, taking in the surroundings in an effort to give her captain even a minute more to rest.

Owain sits in a chair next to the bed, but he hasn’t acknowledged her presence. His posture is withdrawn, leaning his elbows on his knees. Graven’s hand is clasped between his, pressed to Owain’s forehead as if in aid of a prayer. At first, she thinks he might even be asleep – he looks as though he needs it. But then his eyes open and he finally glances her way. He seems to already know why she’s here, a weight of knowing in his expression. The way he stirs Graven awake is gentle, she notices; there’s a tenderness in the momentary lingering of the touch, something she would not have attributed to the stoic innkeeper. Then again, such events place strain on them all.

Graven’s eyes are a clouded, dull shade when he wakes up, but she doesn’t miss the way his pupils still dilate a little when he registers Owain leaning over him. She wonders at it, and then files it away for later. They speak in low voices, and then amber eyes find their way over to her.

“Avelyn,” Graven says weakly, struggling into a half-sitting position so he can see her. He already knows she brings bad news. She can tell that from the stiff set of his jaw. She takes a breath, and then begins her report.

He sinks back down to the bed when she’s halfway through the casualty list of the second destroyed ship of their fleet, eyes screwing shut against what she knows is a bone-deep grief. She does not stop. A pause would be more torment than reprieve. So, she carries on, speaking the words without hearing them. Graven listens, silent and still, and all the while his hand stays gripped with white knuckles in Owain’s.

* * *

She expects Graven to arrive with a support, but once again her captain surprises her. Owain is a shadow only, following in the drow’s careful progress across the walkways at a respectful distance still close enough to provide aid if needed. The crew stop what they’re doing, one by one. Some nod respectfully. Others do not react at all. Graven comes to a stop not far from the gangplank, straight and tall, but he does not have the chance to speak

“Finally showed, ‘ave you?” Avelyn turns to the speaker. She knows this man not as well as others, but well enough. Berwick is his name. He’s young still, only two years before the mast to his name, still rough and carrying his share of misconceptions. His skin is burnt and shimmering in the signs of long hours laboured under the blazing sun to bring the torn remains of their ship back to life, short black hair sticking to his face. He looks controlled, but his expression is a brewing storm. Three others follow him when he comes down the gangplank to meet Graven; three similarly inexperienced crewmates. Graven stays silent, waiting.

“Three weeks we’ve been ‘ere tryin’ to fix this,” Berwick says darkly, flinging a hand behind himself in the Cicada’s direction. “Tryin’ to fix the mess _you_ dragged us into, and where’ve you been? _Restin’_.” Graven does not bring up the wound still torn into his side. He does not say anything. At her side Avelyn can feel Elise stir, and she does not have to look down to see the outrage in the elf’s face. Few know how truly disastrous the captain’s wounds had been, but it would not matter if they did. Others are dead, and he is not. Elise does not understand this, Avelyn knows, but she feels Avelyn’s hand resting on her shoulder and keeps her silence anyway. Now is not the time.

Graven’s silence only seems to agitate Berwick and his friends further, though she does not imagine anything could dampen it now. This rot has had a long time to fester. Berwick steps up so close their noses would nearly touch were they of similar height, hunched over and staring up with shadowed eyes. “Gods. Monsters. _Dragons_. Not a one of us ever signed on for this, you never told us it could turn out like this!”

“Nothing is ever a surely clear course,” Graven says, so quietly Avelyn barely hears him. His words are not for the crowd; they are only for his crew. “I grieve our lost. But I won’t apologise for the decisions I’ve made. Not to you, not to anyone.”

“Not even t’the dead?” Berwick hisses. “Not to the wrecks and the bodies you gambled with? They were _ours_. Men and women I counted more family than my flesh and blood, forgotten in some _cave_!” He trembles now, grief transformed into indignant fury, and still Graven does not move. There is a tension in the crew she has not felt in an age, and she cannot yet tell which way the balance tips. Graven’s mouth opens, and as one she feels them all hold their breath.

“Not even to them,” he says softly. A ripple of disquiet spreads through them.

“And ye’d do it again,” Berwick spits, scornful. Graven looks at him, hard, for a long minute.

“Yes.” He does not explain. He does not have to. Avelyn feels it, the weight in his words. For all the people they left ashore, for the blood and the bonds, for the girl whose hand tightly squeezes her own at that moment. They would not choose differently. Berwick does not see it, and she does not blame him for that. As one his friends move past Graven, Berwick pausing only to spit at his feet.

“Then I’d rather cast myself into the devil’s cauldron than call you _Captain_ another day.” Graven does not watch him go, amber eyes levelled at the vast blue beyond. Avelyn lets go of Elise’s hand to pull four large pouches from a pile behind her. Unceremoniously she flings them over the railing, where they land heavily in the jingle of coins. The four crewman – ex-crewman – turn as one, eyes drawn to the four pouches suspiciously. Avelyn tosses them a scathing look; it’s no bribe, nor test.

“Your cut,” she says evenly. If they are to walk away, they would not see them go empty handed. Perhaps they can buy their way onto a new crew – or a more stable life on the land. Either way, they will have what’s due.

Three of the four pick up the pouches and cradle them uncertainly like newborns. Berwick picks his up like it’s a rat in the rations. Slowly, keeping his eyes on Graven’s back, he upends it; coins spill out over the walkways, clattering with the weight of iron links, slipping through the cracks into the waters below.

“Keep your blood money,” he says, and then as one they are gone.

The silence stretches uncomfortably long. Elise presses closer to her, long ears still arrowed down to the floor, as they have been since the Cicada arrived in port. Avelyn wishes she didn’t have to see this, but it is a sobering lesson that maybe it isn’t entirely bad to learn. She turns to briefly bury her face in blonde curls, breathing deeply, and for an all too brief moment letting herself be somewhere that isn’t here.

There are no more dissenters, at least not yet. Those who remain look to their captain with, if not approval, then at least understanding. Slowly, with painstaking care, the captain turns and heads back the way he came, burying scattered coins underfoot.

* * *

He keeps his composure until he is out of sight, and only then does Graven let the agony of his wounds overwhelm him. A pained groan like splintered wood escapes him, steps faltering clumsily until a steady hand catches him. Owain kindly grants him what remains of his dignity, eyes up, drawing attention not to his grip on Graven’s arm, nor the hoarse drag of the drow’s breath. Graven pats his hand companionably and forces himself upright again.

“Sorry about that,” he says, unsure whether he means the display earlier or his weakness now. He thinks he hears the man huff, the grip on his arm tightening briefly before it falls away. Graven finds himself missing it, even if he is too proud to say so – and wouldn’t it be a foolish thing to admit.

“You need rest,” Owain reminds him, not for the first time and likely not the last. Graven wheezes a grim laugh through clenched teeth.

“Well, that’s the plan.” He doesn’t want to _rest_. He wants to be aboard his ship, helping fix the damage, but they both know well he’d only be a hindrance for now. “And I’m not the only one,” he adds quietly, glancing up at Owain’s drawn features. He has not missed the change, insensate though he was for most of it. Blue eyes flick down to meet him, and privately he confesses to feeling guilty about the dark circles under them.

“I’m well enough,” Owain replies, and perhaps it’s the pain stressing his patience; perhaps it’s something else, but it strikes something hot and tight inside him in exactly the wrong way. Without thinking he catches his fingers around the innkeeper’s pendant, pulling him down what few fractions of an inch he can between Owain’s broad strength and Graven’s withered health.

“I’ve put enough souls in the tithe box for the next decade,” he snarls, ignoring the better part of his judgement which recognises the thinning of Owain’s lips is a warning. “Add your own in out of stupidity and I’ll dredge you back up myself just to kill you again for the insult.” He half expects to be struck, but it’s his own treacherous body that drops him in protest, pulled in a way it’s not ready for. He hits the planks hard, a choked gasp spasming into a cough. He doesn’t care to stop the impassioned curse boiling in his throat from spilling over, the harsh goblin tongue carrying his vitriol far better than any other. Yet even that burns out in time, leaving silence to fall heavily over them.

The hand on his back is gentler than he deserves. It makes his ragged breathing break into humourless laughter, and when he looks up the small smile tugging at Owain’s mouth is patient, if a bit pointed.

“You’re in no position to be lecturing me, Boy,” the old pirate says wryly, letting Graven use his shoulder as a crutch to get himself laboriously to his feet. “When you stop using yourself as a sheathe to bring home dragon teeth as souvenirs, _maybe_ then I’ll let you tell me what to do.” Graven knows what that picture looks like, can still feel the bite, but framed in this way it seems so absurd he can’t help but laugh for real this time, wrapping one arm around his torso when it causes his wounds to begin throbbing again.

“Aye,” he pants out, giving up and leaning fully on Owain for the rest of the short walk back. “And on that day, Keeper, you’ll have run out of interesting stories to tell.”

* * *

The water is too hot.

It stings where it drags over his skin, where it pools in broken lines. It burns where it washes into healing wounds and digs out the dirt. It hurts in a clean way pain hasn’t been in more than a month, and he cherishes it. He’d forgotten how strangely liberating a hot shower could be.

Washing out his hair takes even longer than he thought it would, once the difficult process of unbraiding it is finally finished and he has an alarming amount of dead ends coming free under the wash. Graven’s hair has always been long, but it’s reached his thighs the last year or so. He would never dream of cutting it – his braids are one of the last pieces of home he has, and if nothing else he keeps his goblin ancestry ad culture close in his heart.

In their tribes, as a child, braiding was taught early. In a goblin’s braids his life could be read. The number, length, style, every detail told a story. That had been stripped away from him in the Collective, one individual assassin having no more identity than the next, and it had been the first thing he reclaimed when he left them. Over time, six rows of neatly braided hair had been woven close to his scalp – one for each of the ships in the fleet of Captain Graven Ford.

He stands before the mirror in the washroom of Owain’s home, watching himself comb through the damp strands with his fingers. Parting the sections with incredible care, dividing them out to perfection, the instructions of his father still clear in his mind even now.

Halfway through he falters, leaning heavily on the basin under the mirror and ducking his head down until the long fall of soft silver, eyes shut tight as he tries to force down the burning behind them not for the first time. Asking himself again if it truly _was_ worth it.

Of course, it was. He knows that. There is no room for regret, only for carrying on and mending the damage.

Straightening up, he finishes his work. Weaving in four braids with painstaking care.

Owain is waiting for him when he’s finished dressing, a task somewhat more difficult than he’d like to admit. The innkeeper generously doesn’t comment on the reduced number of braids, but Graven can see his gaze sweep over them, making the connections. He doesn’t mind. It’s his sin to have written plainly across him for all to see, and perhaps for some to understand.

Graven turns silently, letting Owain complete the part he could not – carefully gathering the braids together and binding them with a soft, black silk ribbon set just above the collar of his heavy black cloak. He’s not needed to do this in years. He’s not _felt_ this in years. To lay a broken ship to rest – not one, but two, and all the souls who crewed their final voyages beyond. The Cicada may have survived, and Graven is more thankful for that than he ever thought possible, but it does not change the reality of the wreckage lost within the labyrinthine tunnels of Sibravea.

He feels the comforting weight of Owain’s hands on his shoulders, smoothing out the creases of his cloak and straightening the collar. He too knows the importance of this, one captain to another. He finds himself wondering how long it’s been since Owain’s cloak – not so unlike his own – has been left unused. It still looks pristine, with immaculate purple lining and polished silver buttons – a share of the loot for the reaper, so they used to say.

The breath that fills his lungs still hitches painfully, and his side still threatens to spasm at any moment, but the arm Owain offers him is steady. Avelyn and Elise meet them outside, both similarly dressed in the black and purple honouring the god of death from legends only they keep any longer, and together they join the procession towards the docks where a hundred tiny candles and more drift in the still waters.

One by one, the crew of the Cicada begin to sing, soft and solemn, but rising with each word. A promise to keep going, to sail again when the souls of the dead join the free winds and flare the sails full, and carry them on crystal blue waters.

Graven hears Owain’s voice join his, strong and clear, and for this moment alone allows himself to break.


End file.
